Ask HN: CTO with no experience, how do I make my first technical hire?

With regards to your concern, it's important for any leader to know their own weaknesses. Given that you know you're not a superstar developer so if you'll be hiring one as part of the technical team, make sure you pay attention to what he/she says. Listening to others will help you gain respect. The CTO's role will be enable the technology to fuel the business. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be the best developer but it means that you have to help your technical team to achieve it. Give them the tools, ask for their expertise, let them make it happen and communicate the business strategy to them.

At such an early stage, you'll probably need someone who is a self-starter who can play multiple roles rather than someone you will have to "manage". However, given that you don't have a solid technical background, it will be tough to make a lot of decisions without consulting your technical team. Find someone who is a technical expert but is also willing to help you, not overtake you.

Hire someone way more talented than yourself. Be upfront, that you want them to write good code where that is consistent with the goals of the business and that they will have to live with the pain of the existing code base until there is a good business case for radically changing the code base. The hope is that the good business case will be such strong growth that it all has to be thrown away to make room for the wheel barrows full of money coming through the front door.

Be an example for your hire. Don't own the code. Emphasize that the hire should not own the code either. Emphasize the business goals are the goals and code is only a means of pursuing those goals. The code is not an end in itself.

It will be tough to hire. It will be tough to deal with the existing code for the person who is hired. The goal is that the right person will get it and the wrong candidates will filter themselves out.

Good luck.

Hire a Lead Dev before you hire engineers/programmers. You'll save SO much time and headaches.

I summarize here what I expect from Lead Devs:

- A lead knows how to architect solutions. Not just code them.

- A lead talks higher level than programmers/engineers. You don't want to hear code, you want to hear solutions/implications + pros/cons.

- A lead is interested in the interconnections with other systems, and doesn't overlook them.

- A lead has experienced a range of advanced problems (optimization, weirdest bugs, scale)

- A lead is able to recognise and be interested in the problems he hasn't come across yet, and has the will to tackle them asap if they are a priority for business.

- A lead has a quite deep understanding about the full range of solutions available to solve a problem on his platform. And he spends time on this daily, ideally because he's passionate about it (never seen it other way)

- When you ask a lead how to solve a fairly open engineering problem he'll come up with 1) A good range of approaches 2) Pros/Cons for each of them 3) For each pro/con advise based on his experience.

- A lead has confidence when taking a decision on architecture, he investigates the impacts beforehand. If he's wrong he recognises it.

- Ultimately a lead should be able to come up with a plan to help you refactor any mess with the lowest impact possible in the product. Ideally building the new on new refactored structure, and re-factoring the old by bits when maintenance is needed on those sections (low-budget approach..)

A lead will help you spot other good devs, including other platforms leads. From there, hire engineers who follow the Lead!

Very good list of attributes for a lead dev.

I'll agree with most folks here that you aren't a CTO.

You don't NEED a CTO, today, and at this point it might even be counter productive. Your either going to hire what you can afford, or pay a lot of money for little code return.

Do you need an architect/director/VP/tech-lead? Probably.

What you have already done in "reducing the time to goto market and cost- quality has taken a hit" is make a sound business decision. Without knowing what your road map, funding level, growth projections and anything about the existing codebase we are being asked to give advice in a vacuum.

Your real issue (and why I would say you ARENT a CTO, or VP or any of those other titles) is that you lack a network. If I need advice, a sounding board, an outside opinion or a shoulder to cry on, I have a list of folks I can call 24/7 who I trust and have worked with in the past. Sometimes it isn't wise or possible to get this kind of support within your current company, and as a manager outsiders who understand may be your ONLY outlet.

Your a founder, you just got some cash, set aside 2-3 hours every day to just TALK to new people. You want to buy me lunch and pick my brain for 2 hours, thats a fair deal, and its easier for me to be objective about YOUR issues, and YOUR drama (its going to happen). If we got along and started to get together regularly, I'm going to get insight and continuity that you just can't create in a form post. If I'm willing to listen to you for lunch (and I have do so for others) I'm sure a lot of other folks are as well. There was a story a while back that there were folks willing to give up their passwords for a snickers bar, just imagine what you can get from sandwiches, cheeseburgers and the occasional beer.